The Fool on the Hill: The bike I don't love

I've reviewed a lot of bikes on this blog, both bikes of my own and bikes I've borrowed. And most of those reviews are pretty enthusiastic. They're bikes I've loved. What I'm writing about today is the bike I don't love. The bike which, even when I chose it, even before I bought it, I knew I wouldn't love. And yet, it was a sensible bike to buy, and I don't regret the decision.

So let's examine that.

The context

I live at the top of a considerable hill. Every journey out ends with a journey home, and, particularly on long journeys, you come to the big hill when you're tired. I haven't fully recovered my fitness since Covid; and it's hard to disentangle which parts of my reduced fitness are the effects of a mildly debilitating illness and which are old age. Since Covid, the hill has significantly deterred me from cycling.

At the same time I'm deeply concerned about the climate crisis, I firmly believe we all need to stop burning fossil hydrocarbon, and I don't believe that we can afford, as a society, to replace the current fleet of internal combustion engine vehicles with equivalent battery-powered vehicles: the carbon cost of mining and refining the metals for just that would exceed the remaining carbon budget we have. In any case, I could not personally afford, in simple money terms, to buy an electric car.

This isn't to say I couldn't afford to buy a car. A perfectly good second hand car with several years life still on it would cost less than the bike I bought; but if I had bought another car, I would be a hypocrite.

Over the past couple of years I've hired electric bikes from the village cycle hire scheme, robust, solidly made high quality commuter style bikes with Bosch motors.

In all I've found they don't work for me. They do get me up the big hill without difficulty, even with panniers bulging with groceries; but they're not pleasant bikes to ride, as bikes. The upright riding position doesn't suit me. Also, they're much too heavy to be easy to manhandle when you're off the bike, especially getting them in and out of sheds; and lifting them over fences or gates is out of the question.

I've experimented with bringing a replacement gas bottle — the heaviest item I regularly need to transport — home from Castle Douglas in my bike trailer behind one of them, and found that wasn't a successful experiment. The trailer developed a really worrying speed-wobble coming down hills.

I thought seriously about getting myself an electric cargo bike, but they're all expensive, and the least expensive ones are both very heavy and not, to my mind, well engineered; the ones worth having would have badly stretched my budget even with a zero-interest loan (which I could have got). Of course, I wouldn't need a cargo bike every day...

However, just as I was getting to the point where I needed to make the decision, the village cycle hire scheme decided to buy two cargo bikes, and I was able to persuade them to make one of those the bike I'd picked out as the best available cargo bike, the Riese und Müller Load. If I can hire the Load a couple of times a month to do my heavy shopping, then a good electric bike would do me for everyday journeys, even when I don't feel fit enough to tackle the hill without help.

The choices

Motor systems

So what is a good electric bike?

The lightest electric bike available is widely said to be the Ribble Endurance SLe; in its top of the range form, built up with lightweight kit, it's claimed to be 10.5 Kg, which is only very slightly heavier than my Cannondale Slate, a bike I genuinely do love; but in that top of the range form, it's a scary £7,599.00. The Endurance is strictly a road bike, which means it's not really suitable for the sort of unsurfaced tracks and hill paths I often ride. But Ribble also make a gravel bike with the same motor system, the Mahle X35, and that is also fairly light; so it became the first candidate. The interest was confirmed when a friend in the village turned up on another Ribble bike using the same motor system; and it was clearly well made and very much lighter than any of the Bosch motor bikes I'd seen.

So what makes Mahle-equipped bikes lighter than Bosch equipped bikes? Both motor systems need specially adapted frames, although for different reasons; but the key is, both systems store their battery in the bike's down tube, but in different ways.

In the Bosch system, the battery, which is wider and shorter than that of the Mahle system, is designed to be easily removed. Consequently, on most bikes using the system, the whole top is cut out of the down tube. This converts it from being a cylinder — a very strong structure — into a channel, a much weaker one; and so in order to make up for the loss of rigidity, the channel needs to be made out of much thicker metal.

The Mahle system battery is designed to be removed only when it has reached the end of its life. It is removed from the end of the down tube, which remains a cylinder, and therefore doesn't need extra metal. While the Mahle battery is not locked into the bike, as Bosche battery is, it is bolted in and cannot be removed without substantial disassembly.

Additionally, the Bosch motor is built around the crank axle, in the most stressed area of the bike frame, where the down tube, the seat tube and the chainstays all converge. To put the motor in there, they cannot converge on one neat bottom bracket tube. Instead, a special bracket is needed into which the motor can be rigidly mounted. This bracket has to be quite large, and, again, because it lacks strength from geometry, needs to be made of thicker metal.

By contrast, the Mahle system uses a hub centre motor in the rear wheel. The motor itself is probably no lighter, but it runs on an axle not very different from a standard bicycle axle, assembled into dropouts very much like standard dropouts, and laced into the wheel with spokes exactly like any standard bicycle hub.

These two are not the only e-bike motor systems available, of course. But they are both high quality, well made systems, with torque sensing which enables them to adapt their power output to the rider's input.

I came to the conclusion that the Mahle system was the better system for my purposes, and I'll talk about it in use later in this review; being now pretty familiar with both systems, I'm confirmed in this belief.

The candidates

My Slate — an excellent gravel bike — was (and is) very much my favourite bike, to the point that over the past five years none of my others had seen very much use. It's very nearly as fast on road as a good road bike, but it's also extremely competent on rough tracks. So I decided that what I needed was an electric gravel bike. It didn't have to be as good as the Slate, since I don't intend to part with that; and, indeed, since the electric bike was going to be my utility bike, it would probably end up having mudguards and even a pannier rack, things I do not like but which are useful.

So spending extra money on getting the perfect one didn't seem a priority. Money is something with which, these days, I need to be reasonably careful.

As I've said, the Ribble Gravel AL e was an early candidate. Ribble are a Preston based manufacturer with a good reputation for sporting bicycles, and a gravel bike is most suited to the kind of riding I enjoy. But two things marked the Ribble down. It's only available with Shimano groupsets, and I dislike Shimano partly for ergonomic reasons but also just out of snobbery. The other thing is that Ribble bikes aren't sold by any of my favourite bike shops, and I believe that it is worthwhile supporting local bike shops.

My friend Gareth, who was our star rider back in the days when I was chairperson of Stewartry Wheelers, now owns Studio Velo in Castle Douglas, where he sells, among other things, both Cannondale and Orbea bikes. Both are good makes, and both make gravel bikes with the Mahle system; however both of these, too, are available only with Shimano group sets.

The Cannondale Topstone is an evolution of the Slate with extremely similar geometry, and the bottom-of-the-range electric version comes in a very dark grey which, while not black, I liked. So, although it has a Shimano groupset, and, worse, it's a 'two-by' rather than 'one-by' as I would prefer, I ordered it.

(If you like green bikes, you can have the Topstone with a 'one-by' transmission for a little bit more money — but it's still a Shimano transmission, and I have a bad association with green bikes).

Review part one: Mahle X35

The user interface

The standout feature of the Mahle system, apart from the weight, is the user interface, which is astonishingly simple, elegant and intuitive; in a word, delightful. There is just one button, with a translucent bezel backlit by LEDs. That's all.

A long press on the button switches the system on. The bezel goes white, then green to confirm it's passed it's power on self test, then blue to indicate it's searching for an pairing with your phone by bluetooth, then settles into its 'on' state. In this state, the bezel is white to represent more than 75% battery capacity remaining, green to indicate between 50% and 75%, orange to indicate between 25% and 50%, and red to indicate 25% or less.

Press the button again, however, and it flashes for a few seconds in a different colour: white to indicate that the motor is off (no assistance), green to indicate the minimum assistance level, orange to indicate the intermediate level, and red to indicate maximum assistance. If you press again while it is flashing it advances to the next successive state in that cycle.

Finally, a long press switches the whole system off. And that is all.

There is, additionally, an app for your phone which displays statistics including speed, distance travelled, time riding, total ascent (although I think it underestimates this by about 20%) and battery level; and which will record and save records of your journeys if you choose. It also has a feature that allows you to tune the settings of the three different assistance modes, but I haven't yet experimented with this (I probably shall). You can also buy an optional head unit which fits on the handlebars and displays a subset of this information, but I haven't bought one and can't comment on it.

In use

In use the system is pretty unobtrusive. You can hear the motor, but it's quiet. In conformity to European law, it cuts out at 25 km/h (15.5 mph), and in the highest 'assist three' mode this cutting out (and cutting in again when you decelerate below that speed) is a little abrupt and noticeable. If you change modes while riding, as I often do, there's a brief pause before the new mode engages.

The 'assist one' mode is barely noticeable until you switch if off, when you feel as if brakes have suddenly been applied! 'Assist two' is more noticeable and makes most hills reasonably easy, while 'Assist three' is really quite potent.

The system is very economical; in my use of it over the past six weeks, I've only once had the battery (just barely) below 75%, and that was on a 75 Km (47 mile) ride on which I deliberately made considerable use of assistance. So the actual effective range is much further than you'd expect. I'd expect to manage at least 160 Km (100 miles) before I was in danger of running out of battery. In any case, you can buy and fit an additional external battery, although it would take up one of my bottle cage positions.

Overall, the phone app tells me I've ridden with the motor off 37% of the time, in 'assist one' mode 47%, in 'assist two' 13% and in 'assist three' only 3%.

Things which could be improved

The charge port for the Mahle battery is (at least on my Topstone) under a rubber flap just above the bottom bracket. I've four criticisms here:

1. The charge port is in a position likely to attract water;
2. The flap covering it is flimsy, and does not seal;
3. The charger plug and socket are both fairly flimsy, and I don't think they'll stand up to use for the bike's lifetime;
4. There is a mark on the charger plug to indicate the correct alignment, but it's quite hard to see.

Other than that, the whole system is really impressive.

Review part two: Cannondale Topstone Neo SL2

So what of the bike? The bike suffers from the fact that it is extremely similar to (but not quite as good, considered just as a bicycle, as) my Cannondale Slate, which I've spent seven years setting up as the perfect bike for me, and which I love.

The unfair comparison

The Slate has a Lefty suspension fork with 30 mm of travel. That may sound very little, but especially on unsurfaced roads it makes a huge difference. The new Topstone has a conventional carbon fork.

The Slate (now) has a Selle Italia SLR saddle, which is the saddle I find most comfortable. It has cork bar tape, because that is what I prefer. It has Schwalbe G One tyres, which have a very subtle tread which rolls extremely well and extremely quietly on road while being remarkably good off road. Most important of all, those tyres are tubeless, which means punctures are a very rare thing. But it did not come from the factory with any of these things. Indeed the tyres it came with were utterly dreadful off road, to the point of being actively unsafe.

By contrast the Topstone has the stock saddle Cannondale supply, which is not at all bad, but not what I'd choose; rubber bar tape, which I dislike and shall soon replace; and tyres by Wilderness Trail Bikes, which have a quite aggressive tread which is noisy and draggy on road but would I suspect cope well with mud. These are, objectively, not bad tyres; and they will run tubeless, although at present they still have inner tubes. But I may just get another pair of Schwalbe G Ones and fit those instead; I'm very happy with them on the Slate.

The Slate has a 1x11 SRAM CX1 groupset, and while it has suffered a lot from squeaky disk brakes which I really struggle to keep clean enough, I really love the ergonomics of the levers, and I love the transmission, which has never once in seven years dropped a chain, which is quiet, and which is extremely progressive through the gears.

The Topstone has a 2x10 Shimano GRX groupset. I'll admit the brakes are, so far, excellent (but they're new, they should be). The levers are mushy and squirm under your hands when braking on a descent. The front changer is impossible to trim adequately because it has only four selectable positions, so it rattles a lot of the time. The rear derailleur is sometimes reluctant to shift down. And, because it's a 'two by' system with a big step between the chainrings — 30 teeth on the inner to 46 on the outer — somewhere in your progression up and down the gears you inevitably get a huge, awkward hop.

I knew all this before I bought it. All Shimano drop handlebar levers are awful. Any 'two by' transmission, especially one designed for off road use, has that big step. It's still an extremely nice bike to ride on road, and it suffers off road only by comparison to the Slate.

There's also a really annoying bit of cheeseparing from Cannondale in the build. The Mahle X35 system is designed to power a headlight and tail light from the battery. Cannondale has a gland on the right hand side of the top tube near the head tube, where the rear derailleur cable enters, and it would have been really easy to bring the headlight wire out to some sort of connector there. I acknowledge that there isn't anywhere it would be easy to bring out a tail light cable, but I think missing bringing out the headlight cable is... poor.

Actual problems

The rear wheel of the Topstone — with the motor in it — needs spanners to remove; I need to get myself a spanner of the right size which is light enough to carry on the bike. Disconnecting and reconnecting the cable also looks a little tricky, and I haven't done it yet. Both those things make the risk of a rear puncture a worry, and make me all the more keen to convert the bike to tubeless.

Finally — and again, I did expect this — where the Slate weighs 10 Kg, the Topstone weighs 16. Yes, the difference is mostly the motor and battery. It's also, probably, partly those tyres. This is a difference that matters: the Topstone is sufficiently heavier that I cannot easily lift it over fences and gates.

But the motor...

But, the truth is that over the past two years, since first catching Covid, I haven't been riding the Slate nearly as much as I had before. I've cycled less than I've ever done before in my life. Coming up the hill from the village with even a small amount of groceries, which used to be easy, has been intimidatingly hard.

And the Topstone fixes that. Even at the minimum 'level one' assistance, I can ride up to the farm without stopping. With confidence. On the highest 'level three' assistance, I can turn left at the farm and continue up the rough unsurfaced track over the top of the hill to my own croft — again, with confidence. I used to be able to do that on the Slate, but I certainly can't now. Edited to add after riding the Topstone regularly for two months, I now can again ride my Slate right over the top of the hill — and fast, too. This is a massive improvement in my fitness, which I wouldn't have made without an electric bike.

The longer view

I've been talking quite seriously this week about possibly riding up to Glasgow in October; that's just over a hundred miles. It's further than I've ridden in one day for... about fifteen years. I'm not sure that I will do it, but on the Topstone I'm reasonably sure I could do it.

At heart, this is an excellent bike. It has geometry I really like. It fits me very well. Its handling on tarmac is excellent and on unsurfaced roads is only limited by its lack of suspension. It has got me riding again, got me riding enthusiastically again, and, inter alia, got me riding my beloved Slate more often again, because it is building both my fitness and my confidence.

I've already fitted my preferred Time ATAC pedals, and a pair of bottle cages I like; I shall fit new bar tape; the tyres will definitely be converted to tubeless and will probably be changed to a faster rolling tread. None of these things will cost very much; all will make the bike better for me.

I don't like the groupset. I can live with it, but I don't like it. One of the things I'm considering, though, when I can afford it, is to get a Campagnolo Ekar groupset for the Slate, and transferring the SRAM CX1 (which I really like, and will fit) to the Topstone. That would cost a chunk of money and routing the cables and brake pipes would be an awkward fiddle, but I'd end up with two bikes both of which I really liked. I could even (but probably shan't) get a Lefty for the Topstone. But if I did all that I'd have spent nearly as much on upgrades as I've spent on the bike, and, while it would make it a nicer bike, these are marginal gains.

Conclusion

This is actually, considered as an e-bike, vastly better than any other e-bike I've ridden — actually, and actively, pleasant to ride. And because it's so pleasant to ride, it has extraordinary range for an e-bike — even without the optional external battery. It's a bike which can get me (and could get you) home, from journeys considerably longer than I (or you) normally do, confidently. I don't love it, but it was a good buy, and I would recommend it.

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